While Sandino Moreno's breakthrough vehicle Maria Full of Grace was officially a Colombian-American co-production, it was directed by California's Joshua Marston. South America's most northerly country has long kept a very low international profile in terms of moviemaking: the most prominent current Colombian-born director, Rodrigo García (Albert Nobbs), has carved his career almost exclusively in the US.

Arongo, a 35-year-old native-born Bogotano, trained and worked in Canada and the Netherlands before returning home to shoot his debut feature in the high-altitude city. Indeed, the unique geography of this chaotic metropolis - sprawling concrete encircled by lushly damp verdant hills - is a major element in its impact, evocatively rendered by cinematographer Nicolás Canniccioni via a chilly color-palette of cobalt blues, mossy greens and asphalt grays.

Teenage brothers Tomas (Luis Carlos Guevara), Jairo (Andrés Murillo) and Chaco (James Solis) have fled to the capital from their formerly-idyllic home on the country's western seaboard, driven out by the civil war which claimed the life of their father. Chaco has spent time in "el Norte" - the USA - and has returned sporting the latest ghetto-fabulous fashions and hairstyles. Jairo is is tearaway of the trio, forever falling foul of dangerous foes. Quietly-spoken Tomas, a lanky lad who looks much older than his 13 years, recognizes that he's going to need a trade if he's to have any chance of a decent life. And as Afro-Colombian males favor massively intricate braided designs - painstakingly executed with clippers and razor-blades - there's no shortage of work for a lad with a steady hand and a degree of artistic flair.

Arango's screenplay is a familiar enough coming-of-age chronicle, in which Tomas embarks on his first serious romance while prematurely buckling down to responsibility - under the amusingly stern eye of his barbershop mentors - and keeping tabs on his wayward siblings. Painful bonds of fraternal love are unfussily celebrated this generally downbeat but humor-flecked journey around the male-dominate city-within-a-city that comprises the title's Playa D.C. - i.e. the ironically-named "beach" of Colombia's "capital district" or Distrito Capital.

Almost every scene is scored by hip-hop music - often with a distinctive Indio twist - in a picture whose soundtrack is seamlessly integrated with the tunes blasting out of the characters' own radios and disc-players, often with lyrics that exude a hard-knock, hard-won optimism ("life's a daily struggle - but we get by. / Life isn't easy - but we manage"). The US-influenced rhythms of Tomas's soundscapes thus contribute to the pervasive tang of unpretentious authenticity that elevates La Playa D.C. above the general run of urban-ethnographic world cinema.